


Devil's Own Luck

by pearl_o



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Alternate Universe - Western, Bathing/Washing, Bickering, M/M, Mutant School, Tending to Wounds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-08
Updated: 2014-10-29
Packaged: 2017-12-31 20:23:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1036000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pearl_o/pseuds/pearl_o
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles never knows when Erik's travels will bring him round to the school again, but Erik always finds his way back eventually - though not always in one piece.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Charles felt Erik's mind when he was still about a half hour away from the house. Nothing more than a brief sweep of familiarity -- he didn't probe any further or speak to Erik, but then, there was little need to, knowing Erik was on his way. 

Charles had been just about to tuck in, himself. A small mercy, he supposed, that Erik would choose now to appear, not in the middle of the day when he'd cause an uproar amongst all the students, or in the middle of the night when he'd wake everyone up trying to get Charles to pay him attention. Charles was always the last one up in the house, staying up too late reading and straining his eyes by the candlelight, like Henry always scolded him for, and he had only just given it up for the night. He had finished his last rounds, mentally checking that everyone was sleeping sound and calm, and then further away, outwards from the house, checking for any disturbances. Which was where, naturally enough, he found Erik -- a disturbance if there ever was one.

No use going back to his books. He put a bowl of stew on to heat by the fire -- if past experience was any measure, Erik would be roaring hungry when he arrived -- and sat himself in his favorite chair with some yarn to wait him out. The children's woollens had a tendency to wear themselves out at an alarming rate, almost as impressive as their other abilities, Charles privately thought. He'd learned knitting first thing when he started the school, and in the rare case he ever had a moment of time to himself, there was always plenty of mending to be done.

As it happened, it took Erik closer to an hour. The closer he got, the more obvious it became that there was something wrong, a sense of something off coming from his mind, driving Charles crazy. By the time he finally arrived, Charles was practically pacing a hole in the floor -- a bad idea, given his leg the way it was, and one he was surely going to pay for in the morn. 

_Charles, are you awake?_ Erik called to him. After all these years he was still better at it, that silent way of speaking mind to mind, than anyone else Charles ever met, his mental voice something raspy and low like smoke and whisky. 

_I'm here_ , Charles told him. _Take care of your horse and get in here._

It was a handful of minutes after that. The door was locked, of course, but locks were never any problem, not for Erik. Charles was sitting at the table, waiting, but he started at Erik's appearance. He hadn't even realized it was raining out, but Erik was dripping wet, shivering in the cold.

"Take off your clothes and set them by the fire, you fool," Charles said gruffly. Another time, maybe, Erik would have said something smart in retaliation, but now he just nodded and obeyed without a word, which was out of character enough to be worrisome. When he was down to his stocking feet and longjohns, he stopped. 

Closer to the light, Charles could see that Erik looked thinner than ever, that he hadn't bathed or shaved since who-knew-when, and -- most aggravating at all -- that there was a kerchief tied round his upper right arm, once white but now stained red with blood.

"Why didn't you mention you were hurt?" Charles said, pushing himself back up to stand.

"You didn't give me a chance to say much of anything," Erik pointed out, but Charles only grunted in response. He gathered a bowl of water, some clean rags, a bottle of whisky, a needle and thread. When he returned to the table, Erik was making fast work on the stew, holding the spoon in his left hand. He stopped as Charles sat down beside him, though, and without Charles having to ask, he unbuttoned and pulled down the top of his union suit, leaving him bare from the waist up.

Erik's body was a map of old scars; Charles knew them all, by feel and sight both. (Or almost all, at least; who knew how many new might be there since the last time Erik came round?) He'd tended to plenty of them, too, washing Erik and sewing him back up any number of nights like this one.

This wound wasn't too bad. Bullet rather than a knife, and just a graze across his flesh, not anything deep or direct. The last time Erik got himself shot, it'd been in the meaty part of his thigh, and he'd pulled it right back out himself, before he even got here. That one had been too bad for Charles to take care of; he'd had to call Henry down, and had the bizarre pleasure of seeing Henry practically explode with frustration over Erik's idiocy, and Erik blinking up at Henry, silently bemused at the shift from the mouse he'd never bothered to give a second of attention to.

This, though, this shouldn't even need stitches, Charles thought. He cleaned Erik's arm carefully, the water of the bowl slowly turning from clear to a cloudy red as he worked. When it looked good, he poured some whisky into the wound -- there was a loud clack of Erik's teeth as he winced against the pain -- and then tied it up again with a clean bandage.

They both had been silent throughout the entire process, Erik staring away into the fire while Charles worked. Now, though, he turned back to look at Charles with a lopsided smile. 

"What do you think, doc?" Erik said. "Will I live?"

Charles said, "More than you deserve, you devil."

Erik reached out with his unhurt arm to take Charles's hand in his own, and Charles allowed it. Erik brought it up to his mouth, turning it over to press a kiss to the middle of Charles's palm, lapping at the skin like a kitten with milk.

"Don't start something you ain't gonna finish," Charles warned him.

"Ain't?" Erik repeated, the corners of his eyes crinkling with amusement. The light was getting dim in the room, as the candles began to gutter. Charles should get up and take care of them. He didn't.

"Not a lot of call for speaking properly around here," Charles said. "I've gotten into the habit of speaking such to the parents. It makes them more comfortable." There was any number of strikes against him, with those families. He couldn't do anything about his Eastern patrician background, or his college education, or the limp that immediately marked him as useless to all the farmers and ranchers who depended on their bodies for their living. His face was something he could work on, and had, growing out his beard in an attempt to look less baby-faced. His "sissy, fancified city manners" (as one parent had memorably put it) was another thing, and work on it he had.

"You're better than all of them," Erik murmured. "No shame in that. What do they say about hiding your light behind a bushel?" He stopped his kisses against Charles's hand, moving it instead to stroke against his cheek, rough prickly whiskers against the skin.

"Why, Erik," Charles said, "you get positively honey-tongued after some blood loss."

Erik huffed out a breath, half-laughter. "I'll need to lie low for a few days, at least," he said. "How do you feel about having me around a bit longer?"

"I can't exactly send you back out into the night like this, can I," Charles said drily. "You'd undo all my good work before you get a mile away."

The children would enjoy having Erik around; they always did, on those occasional unexpected times he would come to call. The boys worshiped him from afar, frightened and admiring as he worked on his metals; the girls thought he was handsome and somehow tricked him into dancing with them or letting them wear his boots or hat. Charles could put him to work while he was here, anyhow; they could always use another hand, and Erik's abilities were plenty useful, even making allowances for the reduced use of his arm while he recovered.

"There's not a free bed to be had in the place, though," Charles said, taking his hand back.

"I think I'll survive being forced to share yours," Erik responded.

"I was thinking more along the lines of having you bed down in the stable," Charles shot back, but he did not expect Erik took his words very seriously, not when he followed them up by leaning across the wood dividing them to kiss Erik full on the mouth, and then stroking his hands down Erik's bare chest for some time while that went on.

The kiss ended eventually. Charles's neck ached from the angle, and it was later than sin. "You know the way," he said. "Go on up and I'll join you once I clean up after you. Like I always do," he added.

"I wouldn't keep asking you if you weren't so good at it," Erik said, already rising from his chair. Charles snorted, and swatted him away, but Erik stole one more kiss before he left the room.

He gathered the bloody rags and water and Erik's empty stew bowl, putting them all out of the way, and then he put out all the candles. One last mental purview of his home and its residents -- all safe, still, all sound -- and he made his way towards his bedroom and sleep at last.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How it began; how it goes on.

**_i. a beginning_ **

Charles likes to say that the first time they met, he saved Erik's life. 

Erik remembers it differently, of course, because he's a stubborn son of a bitch who can't agree with anything Charles says if there's a possibility for an argument somewhere. His version of events presents the caim that Charles cost him a sweet poker pot he'd spent the whole damn evening coaxing up to a boil.

Even if that were an accurate recitation of the events of that night (and Charles maintains it is not), Charles rather feels like Erik came out ahead, nonetheless.

The way it started was this: Charles was sitting on a stool at the bar of the only tavern in town, minding his own business. 

This wasn't a hard feat to accomplish, considering how little interest any other person in the place seemed to show in him. It had been a week since he and Raven had gotten off the train, but it hadn't taken Charles an hour to realize that all the clothing and goods that had seemed so perfect when he had picked them out in the New York department stores were completely out of place in the actual West. There was nothing for it, but to give it time, let age and the elements wear them out to something less obviously green and presumably useless. The same, Charles figured, had to work for people as well.

He was halfway through his whisky, thinking of the Dickens novel awaiting him back in his hotel room, when distraction hit him in the form of a particularly loud voice. Not a spoken voice, but rather a thought. Loud as it seemed, it was equally unpleasant, angry and slimy and curled nastily at the edges.

 _I'll kill that cheating bastard_ , the voice was saying, and Charles could tell it was neither a metaphor nor an empty threat, and he spun around on his stool to see a round, ruddy-complexioned man reaching for his pistol, murder as clear on his face as it was on his mind.

Charles froze him, and the whole damn barroom with him. There wasn't time for anything more subtle or well-thought through; he was working on instinct. After a minute, he figured the target of the would-be shooter's ire to be the handsome fellow at the poker table across the room, halfway through dealing a new hand. 

There was nothing for it. Chares used his means to persuade the poker-playing gentleman to stand, gather his things together, and follow Charles out of the tavern altogether. Charles thought it judicious to wait until they were a ways down the main byway of the town, halfway to the hotel, before he released his mental hold on both his companion and the people in the bar.

The gentleman stopped in his tracks the instant Charles let him go. "What the hell--" he began, in a voice that was low, and sharp, and unfamiliarly accented. 

Charles let him get no further than that. "Sir, I must apologize for the liberties I have taken with your person, but under the circumstances I saw no other choice. Your life was in grave danger."

What response Charles was expecting he couldn't have said, but nonetheless he was astonished when the gentleman's blank stare slowly formed into a smile, and then a chuckle. "What, from Elton? Nonsense."

"I assure you," Charles said, feeling perhaps a shade irritated by this belittling of his efforts, "there was a man in that bar who had every intention of seeing you under the ground come morning."

"Oh, I'm sure the intention was there," the gentleman responded, "but that doesn't mean I was in any danger."

The feeling of irritation only grew, and Charles had opened his mouth to insist further, but he was silenced by a wave of the genteman's right hand. Or, more precisely, what followed the wave: all of the coins in Charles's pocket coming to float in a neat circle between them.

"Elton would have found his bullets had no intention of leaving his gun," the man said firmly. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a game to get back to."

"Wait," Charles said, as he turned to leave. He was not certain, later, precisely what came over him, but in the moment the impuse seemed uncontrolable. "I've just--" he began, and then paused a moment, before the gentleman's curious stare, to better form his thoughts. "I've never seen anyone else with such a marvelous talent, not outside of my sister and I," he continued. "I'd love-- what else can you do?"

The hesitation was evident in the man's mind, if less obvious in his stance and face. "It's just some tricks I've got," he said after a moment. 

"More than tricks, it seems to me," Charles said. It had been a while since he had wheedled like this, used his charm to get what he wanted, convince someone else that they wanted it too. But he couldn't help feel like he would regret it if he didn't push, that he would be losing something if this man walked away. There was a warmth of anticipation in his belly, sparks against his spine. "Come have a drink with me in my room," he added, "and we can talk."

The man gave him a slow look, up and down his body, thinking over the request, and Charles knew then that he had him.

*****

They talked all night, about themselves and about every subject in the world, everything in it suddeny new and fine and unexamined, as if it had been waiting there all this time for them to pick up and consider like this. It was almost dawn before the words began to trickle to a stop, and the promise that had been growing in Erik's glances all through the night crystalized from a possibility into a certainty with the press of their lips together.

Erik had never had it that he hadn't paid for it, he confided quietly to Charles; whether it was an expression of nerves or a warning or perhaps both at once, Charles couldn't say. His hands were tender, gentler than Charles would have expected, and he kissed like someone who liked kissing. Charles wouldn't have thought he would be the talkative type in intimate matters, but he whispered about how Charles's skin was softer than anything he'd ever touched, how his eyes were the color of the flowers that grew out in the desert -- the most sentimental claptrap pillow talk imaginable, but in the moment it felt new and thrilling, a discovery just between they two, stoking up the fire in Charles's gut until it was almost unbearable. And then when they had removed Charles's shirt between them, and Erik lowered his mouth to the dip of his collarbone, Erik said softly, "Your mouth is redder than a whore's; I'd worried you might rouge your nipples, too" and Chares had laughed loud enough that for a moment he had worried they would wake Raven in her room on the other side of the hotel wall.

*****

It was weeks before Charles thought to ask if Erik really had been cheating at cards that night. 

"Of course," Erik said. "I always cheat."

He waved aside Charles's dismay and criticism. "I'd be a sucker not to, wouldn't I? Any man is, who pays a game of chance like that and leaves his way up to fate. The world is stacked against you; you've got to even the odds however you can. "

Charles couldn't help but feel somewhat of a hypocrite to his own principles, for as much as he wished Erik would play straight, he wished equally for him never to be caught. 

**_ii. not an ending_ **

Barring emergencies, Charles makes the trip into town once a month, to top up supplies that are getting low and to pick up any post that's gathered in the mean time. He brings a few of the children with him each time, a special privilege and reward for particularly good marks or behavior, and one they guard and covet jealously. As much as Charles sees the school as a sanctuary, he can understand the appeal of these stolen glances of the outside world for them, as exotic and large as even this midding town must appear.

They gather the necessities first, and then there's always a budget for a few treats, but it's the post that's most interesting. Books and magazines and journals, for schooling, for Charles to keep up with the latest research, for nights sitting quietly around the fire reading aloud. Packages of items too rare or specific for the town to provide, sent miles across the rail or even ships. Letters for the children from their families -- plenty of those, for the school is the only one of its kind west of the Mississippi, and some of the children come from quite far away, and haven't seen their families in years, now, the distances too impractical for visits.

(There's another school Charles knows of like theirs, but it's all the way back in Massachusetts. He keeps a careful eye on it, though, and his professional intercourse with its headmistress on philosophies and practices makes its way out here to this post office as well.)

Charles's personal correspondence makes up relatively little of the bulk of their post. A letter from Raven in San Francisco, regular as clockwork. He can read in every line of her writing how happy she is with her life, and so he gave up on any attempt to convince her to come back long ago. She does him the same courtesy, no longer pleading with him to abandon his school and join her in the city. Still, he misses her.

She sends letters for Erik sometimes, as well. If Erik only spends perhaps a few weeks of any year out here with Charles, it is longer than he spends at any other place; the closest to a home base as Erik is ever likely to have. Charles doesn't begrudge him a handful of letters in the drawer by Charles's bed, awaiting his return.

Erik himself doesn't write often -- three or four times, at most, in all the years Charles has known him. Erik is too conscious of his lack of formal schooling, and then, too, he grew up speaking another language altogether; it's a toss up whether his handwriting or his spelling is more atrocious. His particular combination of pride and fierce privacy means he won't pay another to pen a note for him, either, in most cases. Once alone that's happened, and only then because Erik thought he was dying. He _was_ dying, according to the letter the minister sent to Charles, and if he could get to Denver just as fast as he could, time was of the essence.

Charles went: using any aspect he could of his fortune, his name or his authority to hurry his way. By the time he arrived the immediate danger had passed. Erik was very weak, but just better enough to be ornery beyond belief. Charles brought him back home with him to recuperate (none too soon, for Erik was mightily weary with the pure Christian charity of the man who had cared for him on his sickbed: "The son of a bitch wouldn't leave alone the subject of my soul. What business is it of his, I'd like to know. And wouldn't I rather spend my eternity wherever my mother might be, anyhow, and not with these crab-faced saints?")

Erik stayed with him close to five months, then, longer than any time before or since -- long enough for them to get into each other's hair, snapping and growling at each other constantly, and eventually periods of silence whenever they weren't rutting like they were sick for it.

After that it was close to a year before Charles saw him again -- but he came back, then, too, just like he always did, as Charles trusted he always would.


End file.
